Prince Harry previously hailed his older brother Prince William for encouraging him to get therapy after he returned from Afghanistan, however he now appears to have contradicted this in his new Netflix documentary Heart of Invictus.
In the programme, the Duke of Sussex claimed he lacked any “support network” after the end of his first tour in 2008 as it triggered his trauma from losing his mother Princess Diana at a young age.
He said that “no one” around him in the Royal Family “could really help”, even though in an 2017 interview he praised his older brother William for telling him to speak to someone to help him process the impact of Diana’s death.
Speaking on the Mad World podcast with Bryony Gordon in 2017, he recalled that his family and friends told him: “Look, you really need to deal with this. It is not normal to think that nothing has affected you.”
Harry said his issues were not caused by his time in Afghanistan but instead were due to him dealing with the death of his mother in the public eye, while he was still just a child.
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In the series Heart of Invictus, which was released on Netflix today (August 30), the Duke says Diana’s death was “never discussed” and that it took him coming back from the war to realise he had not processed his trauma from 1997.
He also told the show: “Unfortunately, like most of us, the first time you consider therapy is when you are lying on the floor in the foetal position probably wishing you had dealt with some of this stuff previously. And that’s what I really want to change.”
In 2017 Harry admitted he had “shut down all his emotions” after losing his mother, finally deciding to seek help 20 years after she died in a car accident in Paris.
According to The Telegraph’s reporting at the time Harry said he struggled with thoughts of violence and had taken up boxing as “it’s a really good way to let out aggression”.
He explained: “That really saved me because I was on the verge of punching someone, so being able to punch someone who had pads was certainly easier.”
Upon returning from his second tour of Afghanistan in 2013 Harry finally felt able to be open about his emotions, something his brother and other friends reportedly helped him with.
He told Bryony Gordon on her Mad World podcast: “I was a typical 20, 25, 28-year-old running around going ‘life is great’, or ‘life is fine’ and that was exactly it.
“And then [I] started to have a few conversations and actually all of a sudden, all of this grief that I have never processed started to come to the forefront and I was like, there is actually a lot of stuff here that I need to deal with.
“I can safely say it [his trauma] is not Afghanistan-related. I’m not one of those guys that has had to see my best mate blown up next to me and have to apply a tourniquet to both their legs. Luckily, thank God, I wasn’t one of those people.
“It’s all about timing. And for me personally, my brother, you know, bless him, he was a huge support to me. He kept saying this is not right, this is not normal, you need to talk to [someone] about stuff, it’s OK.”
